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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Jobs Claims PA Semiconductor Will Make iPhone, iPod Chips

Steve Jobs made an interesting disclosure to the NY Times yesterday while talking about the remarkable Grand Central technology in Mac OS X Snow Leopard that will allow programmers to get more power out of multicore computers and also to use GPUs for additional performance. In the midst of such talk, he announced for the very first time the reason that Apple purchased processor-maker PA Semiconductor in April.

“PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods,” he said.

Many had speculated that future iPhones could run on Intel silicon, or that PA Semi had been purchased just to recruit some of its talented engineers. Steve says otherwise. Apple’s getting into the mobile processor game. Two years from now, all our iPods and iPhones might be running on their hardware. And if PA’s stuff is as good as everyone says, such exclusive hardware could maintain the competitive advantage that software already offers the iPhone.

About the author

Petemortensen

Pete Mortensen is the communications lead for growth strategy firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

Email the author | Read more posts by Pete Mortensen.

3 comments

    What’s with “Snow Leopard?” It sounds like a 10.5.x release, not the discussed 10.6. Sure, it’s semantics, but considering the crap we all give Microsoft for their different flavors of Vista this sounds like a tweaked 10.5.

    They could call it Puma, and have the Smothers Brothers do ads. Or Cougar, with Demi Moore. Maybe Cheetah, since it’s supposed to be for multi-processor systems. Or call it Cyvet and do a cross-promotion with Starbucks (there’s a big, esoteric “ewwww!” in there for you coffee fanatics).

    Apple should be careful not to tire us out and make us lose interest with all these semantics. Save the big cat names for the big releases, not tweaked versions of the same thing. I’m still on 10.4.11. Is this bad? Am I missing out? ;)
    Visit me at:
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